Chapter 969 - 37: Corpse Mutation

Just as Liu Meng had guessed, these primitive men who were knocked down soon stood up again... Not only that, but some extremely terrible changes occurred on their bodies.

The torn and mashed flesh merged, frantically proliferating like out-of-control cancer cells—a headless corpse stood up, and the severed neck gushed out seemingly endless tissues, rapidly expanding and even enveloping the upper body of the dead... In just a few seconds, this corpse had transformed into a huge meatball with two legs.

Another corpse, which was split in half, had countless tentacles extending from the upper and lower halves, reconnecting the broken torso. These tentacles continued to stretch, quickly forming something like a sea anemone. The body wrapped inside these tentacles visibly shriveled down.

Even a veteran who had experienced several combats, like Liu Meng, couldn't help but gasp at the sight of this strange scene. The two rookies carrying a stretcher beside him were already standing there, dumbfounded and at a loss.

"Bullets can't kill them!" Liu Meng growled, "We need heavy firepower!"

However, the only weapon that could barely be called heavy firepower in the entire convoy was the 12.7mm heavy machine gun mounted on the car roof, along with the grenades carried by the soldiers. But since it was a patrol mission, the grenades the soldiers carried were offensive fragmentation grenades with small charges and low power, making them unlikely to cause any effective damage to these creatures.

Originally, the drones equipped with the patrol unit also carried a ground bomb but went missing with the first squad leader's disappearance.

"Lao Lu! Retreat! Our weapons are useless!" Liu Meng shouted to the deputy platoon leader, who was firing while slowly retreating along the top of the hillside.

"No! We have to hold these foul creatures back!" The deputy platoon leader shouted back, "The company's reinforcements will take at least another ten minutes to arrive. If we run, what will happen if they rush into the village at the mountain's foot?"

Liu Meng was stunned, then gritted his teeth fiercely, "Damn, you're right! Damn it, even if it costs my life, I must hold these creatures here!"

After saying this, he directly raised the assault rifle in his hand and unleashed a burst of fire at the creatures on the hillside.

Unfortunately, Liu Meng's hit rate was pathetically low in this state, with the nearest shot several meters away from the target. Only the flying rock fragments caused some negligible damage to the creatures.

After a brief moment of being dumbstruck, the two rookies beside him immediately reacted—one soldier ran to the vehicle, grabbed the heavy machine gun from the roof, while the other soldier brought out the ammo box from the cabin.

As soldiers of the garrison, even rookies were the cream of the crop.

The roar of the vehicle-mounted heavy machine gun resounded, causing blood to spatter from the creatures—caliber eventually still counts, and even if it couldn't completely annihilate these creatures, the damage from hitting was real. For a moment, these creatures were suppressed to the point of retreating step by step.

But Liu Meng's expression didn't relax a bit. Although the vehicle-mounted heavy machine gun could effectively suppress the creatures, the bullets carried on the vehicle were in several boxes. However, without any spare barrels, even alternating between short and long bursts, after one and a half ammo boxes, the barrel would deform and be scrapped due to overheating.

"Ask the company how long will the support take?!" The deputy platoon leader had run out of all his rifle bullets. He simply tossed his rifle to the ground, drew his pistol, and fired while slowly retreating down the hillside.

"The company deputy is already on the way with the second and third companies! The first company went to evacuate the civilians in the village! Reinforcements will arrive in no more than five minutes! As for the drone, it'll be overhead in three minutes!" shouted a soldier in charge of communications.

"Lao Lu, get down quickly! The heavy machine gun can only hold them back for another ten seconds!" Liu Meng shouted to the deputy platoon leader, "Be careful not to get hit by the drone's bombardment by mistake!"

"Got it!" The deputy platoon leader almost rolled down the hillside, but at this moment, the group of creatures at the top of the hill suddenly turned and ran towards the northeast.

"That's not the direction of Kuqiao Village or the company headquarters." Liu Meng frowned slightly, "Strange... Could they know our reinforcements are coming and are escaping?"

"Who knows! Ah—" The deputy platoon leader gritted his teeth as he applied the tourniquet, glancing at the creatures running away, "Let the support troops split into two groups; one to chase these creatures and another to search the mountains... we need to find the first squad leader, dead or alive, and also check the strange sounds inside the mountain..."

His words suddenly stopped, eyes widening at something behind Liu Meng.

The warrior who had unfortunately died and rolled down the hill with Liu Meng was now crawling up from the ground—even though his head was still folded back to an eerie angle behind his shoulder, his body was staggering toward them step by step.

"Corpse reanimation? These creatures' mimics can induce corpse reanimation!" The deputy platoon leader reacted quickly, grabbed a rifle from a soldier beside him, and repeatedly pulled the trigger at the reanimated warrior!

"This is bad!" Liu Meng seemed to remember something, smacked his thigh hard.

"What's bad?" The deputy platoon leader hurriedly asked.

"The direction those creatures are escaping… that area is a cemetery!" Liu Meng said.

"Nowadays, aren't all corpses cremated? Ashes can't undergo reanimation, right?" The deputy platoon leader asked, puzzled.

"That's an old cemetery, with earth burial tombs, though it's been many years..." Liu Meng muttered, "But I'm not sure... if those bone remnants can crawl out from the ground."

The reanimated warrior fell again under the concentrated barrage, but now his body began to mutate; limbs twitched continuously, and his waist and abdomen arched high as if something inside was trying to tear his body apart and burst out.

"Damn it, damn it, damn it!" The deputy platoon leader cursed repeatedly, then pulled a bucket of gasoline from the vehicle and poured it over the reanimated warrior.

"Brother, have a good journey!" The deputy platoon leader took a deep breath, lit a lighter, and tossed it.

With a "boom," flames more than a person high instantly erupted on the reanimated body.